Then the flames licked my fingers and I let go of it, watching as the page disintegrated into embers and gray ash that floated through the room like wingless insects.
“Sluta! Vad fan gör du? What are you doing?”
Tindra stood in the doorway. Her eyes widened; she dropped the book and grabbed a glowing wisp that turned to ash at her touch. I watched her dully, too exhausted to fight if she came at me.
Instead she turned to chase another burning fragment, then another, snatching at the air and watching in horror as it all turned to ash. Only when the last ember had winked from sight did she halt, panting, her hands smudged with black. A pall of smoke hung over the room as she looked at me.
“Why?”
“You said it would change everything. It’s already changed enough.”
She sank to the floor and stared at The Book of Lamps and Banners. “Did you at least scan that page? Screenshot, anything?”
“No.”
She clutched at her face with her hands, her slender form shaking as she began to sob. I watched her but said nothing. After a minute she gasped and straightened, still trembling, and avoided my eyes. Her expression twisted between rage and despair, and there was a red streak on one cheek where she’d clawed it. When she finally looked at me, she appeared utterly wasted, as bad as I imagined I’d looked on some of my worst days, this being one of them.
For a long moment we stared at each other. I felt as though I gazed at a broken reflection of myself when I was roughly her age. I wondered what she saw, staring back at me. Finally I tilted my head toward the stairs. “Is he dead?”
I thought she wouldn’t reply. “No. I wish he was,” she said at last, with that same cold composure I had first observed in London.
“What about Freya?”
“I don’t know. She’ll be in shock.”
“You used her. Like you used Tommy, like you would’ve used me…”
“I didn’t use her. I set her free, so she could do what she was longing to do.”
“No. It was what you were longing to do.”
“Maybe.”
“What will you do now?”
“Call the police.” She looked at the window, the first shafts of light slanting through the trees.
“The police?”
“You were right: I need to tell them, if there were other girls. Freya won’t remember what happened up there. Her husband has a history of hurting her—maybe she called the police, maybe not. But someone will know. She had a psychotic break, and killed him. Who could blame her?”
She got to her feet, the book in her hand. “I will remind them about Ville, about what he did to me when I was a girl. That when I came here now to see him, he drugged me and locked me in that cellar, but I escaped. Anything I did was self-defense.”
“You think they’ll believe you?”
“They’ll believe what they want to believe. That is how it is on Kalkö. But they have a record of what happened when I was thirteen. This time they’ll have to do something.”
She stared at me. The terrifying absence was gone from her eyes. She looked exhausted, and resigned.
“Thank you,” she said. “You saved me.”
“Likewise. Remember to tell the cops that when they arrest me.” I dug into my pocket for the retainer and photo CD, handed them to her. “Here. I think the police will want this.”
She nodded, and I went on. “Why did you kill him first? Erik? Why not Ville?”
“I wanted Ville to see it. To know what would happen to him. How it would feel.”
I glanced at the back door, grateful I hadn't witnessed Freya clubbing to death her abusive husband. I was too beat to run. I hoped Quinn wouldn’t sleep through his flight. When I looked back, I saw Tindra watching me closely. “How did you get here?” she asked.
“I drove. I left the car out on the road, then walked the rest of the way here.”
She regarded me thoughtfully, then turned and walked into the studio, returning a minute later. “You made a mess in there. I almost couldn’t find them.”
She held up a set of keys and started for the back door. “Come on. I’ll drive you to your car.”
“What?”
“I would have died down there. And if you’re here, it will only make things confusing for the police. There are too many things. Questions. Too many people. Erik. Tommy…It will just be easier.”
She looked me up and down. “I think you need a doctor. Where are you staying?”
“That place by the slag heap.”
“Slagghögen?” She laughed, the first time I’d ever heard her laugh. “That’s such a dump.”
She held the door for me, and we stepped outside, blinking in the late-winter light.
Chapter 71
Tindra commandeered the old blue Volvo and drove, turning when I pointed at the end of the dirt road. I sank down into the seat, my bag in my lap, trying to stay out of sight.
“No one will see you,” Tindra said. She’d set The Book of Lamps and Banners on the seat between us, now safely tucked back into its clamshell. “Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter. On Kalkö, they see what they want to see. The cops are all asleep. Whoever’s on duty, he’ll just be thinking about his coffee. Because, as everyone knows, there is no crime on Kalkö.”
When we reached the Jetta, she pulled over. “Can you drive okay?”
“I’ll manage.” I reached to open the door. “Thanks.”
“Wait.” She picked up The Book of Lamps and Banners. “Your geek friend—this is his, right?”
“It was, till you bought it.”
She shook her head. “I canceled the transaction as soon as I knew it was stolen, back in my flat.” She held out the clamshell. “Give it to him. He should have sold it to a university. Make sure he does that now.”
“But—why?”
“I have no use for it. The code is broken.”
“What about your app?”
“What about my app.” Something dark flickered in her eyes, and she shrugged. “We will see about that.”
I took the clamshell, slipped it into my bag, and stepped out of the car. Tindra leaned across the seat. “You should leave quickly. I’ll wait to call, but…”
“I have an early flight. Thanks,” I said, and closed the door.
I managed to make it back to the hotel, my hands barely able to clutch the steering wheel. When I reached Slagghögen, I parked and staggered inside. Lightning played across my vision: not Ludus Mentis, but withdrawal. The girl with the Mohawk glanced up as I walked by, then turned back to her mobile.
Quinn was still asleep. I dropped my bag, peeled off my jacket and boots, and sat on the bed beside him. I knew if I lay down, I’d pass out. I was afraid to close my eyes for the same reason.
“Hey.” I grasped his shoulder. “Quinn, wake up, wake up…”
I shook him until he blinked awake. “Hey,” he murmured. The smell of smoke and alcohol on his skin made me flinch. His eyes widened. “Cass? You okay?”
I shook my head. He put his arms around me and held me close as I began to shudder uncontrollably. When I could finally speak, my throat was raw. “We need to go now. To the airport.”
“To the airport? You’re coming?”
“I want to go to Reykjavík,” I whispered. “But we have to go now.”
“You better shower first.” He sat up, wincing. “Me too.”
He helped me undress and climb into the shower. I held myself upright, hands braced against the plastic cubicle as I shivered helplessly despite the scalding water. It had been at least twelve hours since I’d last had a drink, the longest I’d gone without alcohol in decades. I doubled over, convulsing with dry heaves as I slid to the floor and collapsed.
I don’t know how long I lay there, the tremors of withdrawal causing me to jerk back and forth, my head smacking against the wall. Probably just a few minutes. People die from withdrawal, but I wasn’t going to check out in the shower stall of the Slag Heap Hote
l. I finally dragged myself up and turned off the water. The room tilted around me as I stumbled back into the bedroom.
“Jesus, Cassie.” Quinn got me to the bed. When he started to open my bag to look for clean clothes, I stopped him. “No—be careful.”
I gestured at the clamshell. He picked it up and frowned. “Joseph Conrad?”
“No.”
He opened it, stared at what was inside, and clapped the slipcase closed again. “Holy shit. You found it.”
“I told you I would.”
He leaned over to kiss me, then set the book on the bed stand. He handed me a pair of clean black jeans, socks, a worn black sweater. “See if you can do that by yourself while I jump in the shower.”
When he came out, he dressed quickly. He replaced the clamshell at the bottom of my bag with the Nikon, rolled up my filthy clothes, and set them on top. “You have any crank left?”
“No. Just a few pills. Xanax, mostly.”
“Good.”
He finished gathering his things, checked the room one last time, handed me my bag and my leather jacket. “Let’s go.”
He hugged me to him and we walked downstairs, Quinn nodding at the girl at the desk. “Tack,” he said.
“Tack,” she replied without looking up.
Chapter 72
We made our flight, barely. There were only three other passengers. Just as well—I might have drawn attention to myself, shivering in the waiting room as if I’d just been pulled from an icy lake. As it was, no one looked at me. I swallowed a Xanax that kicked in just before we landed in Arlanda. We had another short layover, then boarded another nearly empty flight, to Reykjavík, without incident. I took another Xanax, and passed out.
I don’t remember much after that. It was like a walking blackout, only without the benefit of having had a drink. But somehow I got through border control in Keflavík. Fears over the novel virus had yet to hit Iceland, and airport officials there are used to drunks, which must have helped.
The next time I awoke and was fully compos mentis, it was two days later. I was in Quinn’s place, lying on his futon. The overheated room reeked of cigarettes and weed, but there was no sign of any booze. Quinn bent over me, stroking my forehead, and helped me to sit upright.
“Here, baby. Drink this.” He held up a bottle of electrolyte solution and slipped a straw through my cracked lips. “I’ve been getting some into you whenever I can. Do you remember?” I shook my head. “I didn’t think so.”
I sipped the blue liquid. “This is disgusting,” I said.
“I’ll tell you what’s disgusting.” He took the bottle and gently cupped my chin. “Watching you convulse for the last two days. I thought I lost you.”
I shuddered, my muscles contracting uncontrollably. “You still might.”
Quinn lay down on the futon and put his arms around me. “I know what it’s like. It’s gonna take a while, baby. I looked to see if I could check you into someplace here, but it’s tough. Long waiting list. And you’re American. They don’t like American junkies mooching off their health care. And this whole virus scare—things are starting to get weird.”
I spent the next few days writhing on Quinn’s mattress, begging for a drink, a bump; begging him to kill me. Gradually the tremors eased, and the gut-wrenching nausea. The craving for alcohol and speed did not.
When I was strong enough to get up and sit with Quinn at the table and eat a few bites of a proper meal, I finally told him everything that had transpired since the night I’d left him and found Tindra. I was stone-cold sober by then: a mutilated marionette, every string cut and every sticklike limb twisted into an unnatural shape. I didn’t care that another drink would kill me. But losing Quinn would mean another kind of withdrawal, one I couldn’t survive.
Another week passed. Quinn began to leave me for a few hours while he went to man the Eskimo Vinyl table at Kolaportið, the flea market where he did most of his face-to-face business. While he was gone, I searched every inch of his place, looking for a bottle, a pill, anything that might get me off. Other than a few cannabis seeds and stems, I came up cold. I chewed them, washing them down with water that smelled like rotten eggs.
I was getting better, but I was still in no condition to go out looking for a liquor store on foot. Plus, I knew Quinn would kill me if I did.
Instead, I started taking my Nikon and wandering around the wasteland of black lava that surrounded the warehouses and cell towers by Quinn’s place. I had to ration the number of photos I took—until I found another source of Tri-X film, I couldn’t squander the few rolls I had left. And I had no way of processing the film.
That would change. During those days outside, with Reykjavík’s cold wind buffeting me like a wounded bird in flight, I began to come up with a plan. I brooded on it as I lay beside Quinn each night, listening to him breathe after we’d fucked, not like teenagers but like people who’d washed ashore after a plane crash, amazed and a little frightened to find ourselves still alive. One morning as I cradled a chipped coffee mug and Quinn sat smoking a cigarette, I said, “I have an idea.”
“So shoot.”
I told him. He listened, and I saw his expression change, from dubious to suspicious to obdurate to pissed off until, finally, he sighed and shook his head.
“Christ. Hurricane Cass. You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
I leaned forward to lock my arm around his neck, pulling him to me. “And you fucking love it.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“It’ll work.” I kissed him, tasting cigarettes and black coffee, that lingering trace of something bitter I’d known since we were seventeen. I drew away from him, took his hand in mine, and kissed one knuckle.
“I need to get straight,” I added. “Do whatever the fuck it is people do to stay sober.”
“You need to go into AA.”
“Or something. I’ll figure it out.”
“How long do you think all this will take?”
“I have no idea.”
“Will you come back?”
I looked at him, his green eyes and scarred face, clean shaven after the days in London and Sweden; the close-cropped graying hair that did little to hide the cross that had been carved into his scalp decades ago, in some ritual I never wanted to have explained to me.
“Like a bad penny,” I said, and kissed him again.
Chapter 73
The next day, I booked my flight back to New York. News of the novel virus was everywhere now. Quinn was edgy. I did my best to reassure him, without much luck. He had a lot to be edgy about—that I’d fall off the wagon, that I’d never come back, that my plan would fail.
“Look, we’ll work something out,” I said. Outside, the early-March rain hammered at the Quonset hut’s metal roof. It sounded like a bomber had dropped a million ball bearings onto the structure. “But I’m not staying here. It’s too damn cold. And dark.”
“Whatever. Greece, I can handle Greece.” He paced to the window. “And you need to take off for a little while so I can have a drink without having to hide the bottle.”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not joking.”
When it was midmorning Pacific Standard Time, I used Quinn’s mobile to call Gryffin Haselton. He answered after the first ring. When he heard my voice, he disconnected. I called back: same thing. At last I texted him.
I have the book.
Seconds later, Quinn’s mobile chimed.
“What do you mean?” demanded Gryffin.
“I have it. The Book of Lamps and Banners. Where are you?”
“What? Wait—”
“Shut up and listen to me. Are you still in London?”
“No, home. San Francisco. Where—”
“I’m flying back to New York tomorrow. You need to meet me there. I’ll text you when and where.”
I took a breath, then gave him the figure I’d decided on. A shit ton of money, but a lot less than what Tindra Bergstrand had intended to
pay him. Gryffin laughed.
“I’m not kidding,” I said. “I’ll give you my account number, you can transfer the money as soon as you get it.”
“But that’s my book!”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law. When you’re dealing with the black market, I think it’s ten-tenths. Trust me, my father’s an attorney.”
“But I don’t have that much money!”
“You will once you sell the book. Start working on it, let me know when you’re ready. See you.”
I handed the mobile to Quinn and flopped onto the bed beside him. “Nice,” he said. “What are we going to do with all that money?”
“Me? Rehab. Somewhere warm. California, maybe, one of those places where rock stars go. Then back here. Then Greece, when this virus thing blows over. With you.”
I ran a finger down one of the vertical incisions beside his mouth, leaned in to kiss him. He tasted of Myer’s rum, the closest I was going to get to it for a while. But then he pulled me on top of him, and I almost didn’t care.
Chapter 74
Quinn drove me to the airport in the morning. We walked to the security gate, arms wrapped around each other, so it was hard to tell where his leather jacket ended and mine began. When we reached the gate, he pulled away, holding me at arm’s length. “We keep doing this,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Airports. Leaving.”
“At least we’re doing it together. And coming back.”
We kissed one last time, my face buried in his neck. As I drew away, I whispered in his ear.
“I know,” he murmured, stroking my cheek. “Me too.”
I headed toward the security gate, glanced back to see him standing where I’d left him, arms crossed. As I turned the corner, he raised his hand. Then he was gone.
The Book of Lamps and Banners Page 30
